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wingspan

wingspan

16 3.2
The distance between the tips of a bird's or plane's spread wings
  • noun
  • /ˈwɪŋˌspæn/
  • Specialized
translation icon : envergadura
  • The wingspan of the eagle allows it to soar gracefully through the skies.
  • wingspan of four feet
  • wingspan of about 40 inches
  • wingspan of about

You have like your giant, like dragon body, huge wingspan, but like gold wolf pulse dragon wolf.

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Examples

  • The Article has an 80-foot wingspan.

  • It's a 60-foot overall wingspan.

  • MIKE: It has the largest wingspan of any bird on earth.

  • And the first flight... was less than the wingspan of a modern jet.

  • --Thirteen pounds and a wingspan of nearly 7 feet.

  • And in the sky, the wingspan of some insects reaches over three feet.

  • The DC-10 had a wingspan of over one hundred and fifty-five feet.

    Fiction book (1991)
  • The Quetzalcoatlus is the biggest flying animal of all time, with a 40-foot wingspan.

  • Females, whose wingspans reach four feet, are substantially larger than males.

    Academic text (1990)
  • With a nine-and-one-half-foot wingspan, condors can soar almost effortlessly for hours over hundreds of square miles a day.

    Academic text (1999)

Synonyms

wingspread
vswingspan
  • Specialized
1 7.2

The distance from one wing tip to the other when wings are fully open

is the same measure but used more generally, including aircraft

How Long

wingspan
  • Specialized
16 3.2

Surface Forms

wingspan singular
wingspans plural

Morphology

wingspan = wing + span (transparent) = wing + span

The meaning is directly the combination of 'wing' + 'span' denoting the distance between wing tips, which is straightforward for learners.

Etymology

Wingspan is easy to picture: it joins wing and span, where span means 'stretch' or 'distance'. So, wingspan is the distance a wing 'stretches' from tip to tip, the measure we use for birds, planes, or gliders.